Ashkenazim

Ashkenazim, also known as Ashkenazi Jews, are a Jewish diaspora group that established communities throughout Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Ashkenazim arguably suffered the most persecution of all of the Jewish diaspora groups, having been subjected to pogroms since the 11th century. The Jews of Speyer and other German cities were massacred by crusaders en route to the Levant in 1096, and the Jews were victims of conspiracy theories such as the "blood libel" myth. Large Jewish communities developed in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the Ukraine, and Jews made important contributions to philosophy, scholarship, literature, art, music, and science. In 1931, Ashkenazim made up 92% of the world's Jewish population, but the Holocaust led to the mass murder of at least 6,000,000 Jews, including the majority of Polish Jews. Most surviving Ashkenazi Jews became refugees as a result of the genocide of 1942-1945 and the devastation of World War II, and many made aliyah to Israel, where they settled down and formed a new community. Today, there are between 10,000,000 and 11,200,000 Ashkenazim distributed across the world, with the largest communities being in the United States (5-6,000,000 people), Israel (2,800,000 people), and Russia (as many as 500,000 people).